


frequency

by killaidanturner



Category: The Hobbit RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, Science, alternate universe - astronauts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 07:19:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6109258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killaidanturner/pseuds/killaidanturner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From that small window he sees the earth for how it really is, in all new shades and colours, vibrant to his eyes. He imagines explaining the colours to Dean, trying to say how they slither like tentacles between the stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	frequency

**Author's Note:**

> we all knew this was a matter of time before I caved and did the ultimate space fic filled with space metaphors and space gay. literally all of my friends are enablers. I had 3 requests for this so thank my friends for finally getting me to do it.

“What made you want to be an astronaut?” 

 

He’s heard this question his whole life, he’s been asked it more than anything other question. He assumes that other people hear a lot, ‘when are you going to settle down?’ or ‘do you have someone new in your life?’ and the ever present, ‘are you dating?’. Those aren’t the types of questions he is used to hearing, instead ‘what made you want to be an astronaut?’ plays to him like a broken record. 

 

Every time it’s the same answer, “I wanted to explore the unknown.” 

 

There is more to it than that, he thinks that maybe it was black holes and how they pull the sky towards them, a violent embrace. There was something almost romantic about black holes to him, they have a promise of oblivion hidden in their depths. A clawing maw of infinite.

 

The first time he heard the recording of Apollo 11, the cackling communication and the long draw of breath. That is when he started dreaming of rocketships, of the flame and how clouds look when they’re breaking. That’s when he started dreaming of aiming higher, of reaching for the stars. 

 

It was the way his mother sang to him at night as she tucked him into bed, her voice carrying the sound of the stars as she said the galaxy was singing for him. A milky way lullaby carried in the crescendo of her vowels. 

 

He remembers reading that our destiny doesn’t lie in front of us, but instead above us. Reaching, reaching, reaching.

 

Aidan spent time in his room filled with toy models, an exact replica of a space shuttle sat on his book shelf, shelves lined with titles like cosmos and interstellar age. He would hold the shuttle in his hands as he laid on his back, his eyes looking up at his blue painted ceiling, at the glow in the dark stars that lined it and imagined himself jumping from star to star, running from planet to planet. 

 

It was the first time he learned about the iron in his veins, the calcium in his teeth, the first time he learned that we are made out of collapsing stars. 

 

He filled notebooks with doodles, with equations, with promises and hopes. It was falling in love with the tail of a comet, his eyes watching wide and with wonder at how sunlight hits the dust particles causing a bright burning light. That those dust particles reside in him, that he is burning.

 

All of these accumulations are what made him decide to explore the vast reaches of space. 

 

* * *

The first time he truthfully answers the question is a week before he starts another round of training. He is sitting in the cafeteria, a blonde man has sat down across from him, his hair pushed back falling in golden waves down to his ears. His eyes shine blue, blue like the sky on a summer night, fading from light to dark.

 

“What made you want to be an astronaut?” His accent rolls quickly, his voice smooth. “And please don’t tell me it’s because your parents told you that you could be whatever you wanted because I have heard that too many times.” 

 

Aidan laughs, he supposes that maybe he shouldn’t but the man sitting across from him is making a face of irritation and rolling up the sleeves on his shirt. “No, it wasn’t anything like that. I mean yeah my parents were encouraging but I would have done this regardless.”

 

“So what was it then?” He still hasn’t even introduced himself but he’s talking to Aidan like he’s known him his whole life and there’s something almost charming about it. 

 

“I wanted to be apart of something bigger.” It’s true, this whole underlying thing that we are such a small part in the universe. 

 

The man across from him stops moving, setting down his cutlery. He rests his arms on the table as he looks at Aidan. His eyes move slowly as if they’re taking in the details of his face. Normally Aidan would feel uncomfortable but he can’t bring himself to look away. 

 

“When you say that do you mean that you wanted to be apart of something that researches and advances science or,”

 

Aidan cuts him off, “I want to know what it feels like, going out there into space and looking down at everything. I want to know what if feels like to feel bigger than what I am.” 

 

They look at each other, the sound of the cafeteria filtering between them. After a moment the man smiles at him and reaches out his hand. “Dean O’Gorman. I’ll be working in the MCC, your local ground control expert. I have training coming up with the crew being sent out to the ISS.”

 

“Aidan Turner. Astronaut. I suppose you’ll be who I’ll be communicating with when I’m up there.” Aidan’s hand wraps around Dean’s. He tries to ignore the way his pulse picks up, the rough texture of Dean’s hands against his. 

 

“For six months I will be the voice on the other end, down here staring at a computer screen.” 

 

Aidan laughs, his eyes crinkling as he looks at the man in front of him and he thinks to himself that he doesn’t mind that idea so much.

 

* * *

Dean pops up in places he shouldn’t, or maybe he just always manages to find Aidan when he’s places he shouldn’t be.

 

“What are you doing?” Dean asks as he leans against the doorframe to an unused training room.

 

“I just wanted to see what was in here.” Aidan runs his hands along a replica capsule. 

 

“Isn’t there a saying, something like curiosity killed the cat.”

 

“But satisfaction brought it back.” Aidan turns around, his face pulled into a smile. Dean pauses, taking in Aidan’s wild curls and wide grin. 

 

“What?” He asks in a moment of confusion.

 

“Satisfaction brought it back, so it’s good to be a bit curious.” 

 

Dean tilts his head to the side, trying to take in Aidan. He seems out of place, something too beautiful to be so wondrous about the universe, too beautiful to exist in the same time and place as him. It’s something out of a sci-fi book Dean thinks to himself, there’s something almost ethereal to him, something that makes him look like he’s from a different world. Maybe that’s what draws Dean to him, Aidan’s own gravitational pull and Dean is just getting caught in his orbit. 

  
  


* * *

It’s not a slow change, it doesn’t happen gradually. Instead they slot themselves into each other’s lives like they had always been there. At night Aidan knocks on Dean’s door, usually a book, movie, or food in his hands and his mouth already forming a question or one of his many strong opinions.

 

Dean likes it like this, just to the two of them sitting on his bed with their ankles crossed and feet touching while Aidan puts on Cosmos even though Dean insists they already know everything on the show. 

 

“But there’s nothing like poetry about the universe and this show delivers on that.” Aidan is picking an episode on netflix.

 

They watch an episode about interstellar winds and the voyager program and while Aidan keeps his eyes on the tv Dean can’t help but watch Aidan. Watch his small intakes of breath, his eyes as they widen upon certain facts.

 

“How are you amazed by this?” Dean asks quietly. 

 

“We chucked a probe up into space and it’s travelled further than any man made object. What isn’t amazing about that?” 

 

Dean can count on one hand the number of things he finds amazing, one of them happens to be sitting in front of him.

 

* * *

“You asked me so it’s my turn to ask you, it’s only fair. What made you want to get into this profession? You’re looking at data and numbers and shit all fucking day.”

 

Dean shrugs.

 

“What does that mean? That you don’t know?” 

 

“I want to know what’s out there, I just don’t want to _be_ the one out there.” 

 

Aidan starts humming The X-Files theme song. “Oh sorry mate, sounded like you were about to go into a whole the truth it out there bit.” 

 

“It is though, isn’t it? I mean that’s why you’re doing this, to find  _ something _ .”

 

“Yeah, it is.” He’s wondering if he’s already found it.

 

* * *

When Aidan laughs he laughs like there's stars on his tongue and the moonrise in his eyes.

 

* * *

“I want you to make me a playlist.” Aidan shoves his laptop at Dean one afternoon while he is sitting at his workstation with a cup of coffee in his hand.

 

“What?” 

 

“Music. A playlist. Make it good too for when I’m up there, I won't have anything but my laptop.” Aidan runs a hand through his thick curls that look like they haven’t seen a brush or water in a few days.

 

_ You’ll have me. _ Dean wants to say but instead he clears his throat. “Anything in particular or,”

 

“Whatever you want, your favorite songs, the songs you hate. Just anything. This way you can still annoy me even when we’re thousands of miles apart.”

 

“Very funny, Turner.” 

 

Aidan winks at him before leaving Dean alone with Aidan’s computer.

 

* * *

He figures he probably shouldn’t but he does it anyways. He changes the background on Aidan’s computer to a picture from Star Wars.

 

“You know how I feel about this movie.” 

 

“I still think that you just don’t grasp it.” Dean is smug as he leans on Aidan’s bed. Aidan is sitting criss-cross with his laptop resting on his legs.

 

“We’re scientists, it doesn’t make any sense.” Aidan shakes his head as he opens up his music folder. 

 

“It doesn’t even make any sense to George Lucas and he created it. Why can’t you just enjoy it for what it is? They’re literally exploring space!” Dean sits up on the bed, his hands moving about. 

 

“Oh my god, you’re a huge nerd. I should have known!”

 

“We work for NASA!” Dean shouts back.

 

They’re both laughing, Aidan has fallen back on the bed next to Dean. They’re hands are side by side and when Aidan reaches out and puts his hand in Dean’s he closes his fingers tightly and doesn’t let go.

 

“Don’t look at the playlist till you get up there.” Dean’s voice is quiet. He can feel his pulse in his neck, he keeps his eyes to the ceiling, too nervous to look at Aidan.

 

“It better not be the Star Wars soundtracks.” 

 

Dean smiles and squeezes his hand tighter.

 

* * *

It’s standard to do training with ground control, what isn’t standard though is the maelstrom inside Aidan’s chest. He hears Dean on the communicator, his voice deeper through the receiver. He listens to his words, follows his instructions. He works well with him and between them they work out a system. Sometimes when Aidan is in a simulator, pretending to be about the International Space Station, they send messages in code to each other.

 

01001001 01110100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01110011 01110100 01110010 01100001 01101110 01100111 01100101 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100101 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110011 01101001 01111000 00100000 01101101 01101111 01101110 01110100 01101000 01110011 

 

_ It will be strange not seeing you for six months. _

 

Aidan smiles when he deciphers the message. He worries for a brief moment they someone will see their message and know about whatever it is growing between them. He brushes it off, this is just training and he doesn’t believe anyone is watching them that closely. 

 

01001001 00100111 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110011 01110100 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101011 01100101 01100101 01110000 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01100001 01101110 01111001 

 

_ I’ll still have you to keep me company. _

 

* * *

The night before launch they spend it together, they spend it on the roof of the building looking up at the stars.

 

Aidan seems to wear the night sky like a second skin. It illuminates him and makes him look even more alive. 

 

He’s nervous but not for the reasons he thought he would be. He’s nervous about Dean, about this thing manifesting between them. He imagines cutting out constellations and lining them along Dean’s jaw, on the cusp of his cheek. He wonders if it will serve as a map, if maybe then this will make sense. 

 

“I won't get to see you tomorrow, it’s not like they’ll let me near the shuttle, not when I have to be at MCC.” Dean shoves his hands in his pockets and rests his elbows against the railing. 

 

“Did you want to? See me that is.”

 

“Of course I do.”

 

“Are we talking like a movie thing where there’s a dramatic scene, the frames are slowed down and there’s dramatic music and wide sweeping shots of the scenery?” Aidan holds up his hands as if he’s looking through a camera lens. 

 

Dean smiles and nudges him with his elbow. “Something along those lines.”

 

“What am I missing then?” Aidan leans in close to him causing Dean to turn to face him. He pulls his hands out of his pockets and looks up into Aidan’s dark eyes. 

 

“The goodbye kiss.”

 

“Ah, that would complete the scene and give probably an Oscar worthy performance.” Aidan quirks his lips as he leans down. Dean takes his cue and leans into Aidan, one hand going to his neck and the other to his cheek. It’s slow at first, cautious, cautious the way that there are checks and regulations before lift off. It’s not them.

 

Dean pushes Aidan back against the railing, using a leg to part Aidan’s thighs. He grinds his hips and can feel Aidan becoming hard in his jeans. Aidan’s hands are pulling at the back of Dean’s shirt, running up and down his back as he tries to find more friction. It’s more them, the rumble of the engine as it ignites. 

 

It’s a collision, stars, tectonic plates, an earthquake. 

 

They make it back to Aidan’s room and fall onto the sheets, drowning in them like waves. When Aidan pulls back and looks at him, he looks at him the same way he does the night sky, like he holds the secrets to the universe.

 

* * *

_ T Minus _

 

Aidan tries to focus on the countdown of numbers. He closes his eyes as his hands grip the side of his chair. With his eyes closed he remembers his small hands gripping a model of this shuttle, flying it around his room and down to the backyard at night. He remembers these things in flashes. His mind drifts to Dean, sitting in front of his computer with a headset on as he watches him leave the atmosphere. He wonders if he can warn space that he’s coming.

 

* * *

“Don’t you think it’s going to be odd when one of the astronauts keeps specifically calling a certain line in the MCC?” Dean tries to hide his smile as he whispers into his headset.

 

“I’m trying to decide if your whispering makes a difference when all of these conversations are recorded.” Aidan floats from the sleeping quarters and into the compartment that has gym equipment. 

 

“You’re the worst.”

 

“Besides, we get personal calls. I’m just chatting with my boyfriend who happens to be vital to the mission. Really, it could be counted as a work call.” 

 

Dean tries not to get hung up on the word boyfriend, especially since they never established anything between them. Especially since Aidan will be floating in the reaches of space for the next six months. 

 

“Is there a wicked delay on your end?” Aidan finally asks after a moment of silence. 

 

“Oh no, sorry, just got distracted as all.” Dean takes a pen and taps it against the counter.

 

“Well I would prefer if you didn’t, you know seeing as you’re at work, what if you hit like a detonator button and blow me up?” 

 

Dean laughs, “you know we don’t have one of those.” 

 

“That’s exactly what they want you to think.”

 

* * *

“What does it look like?” Dean asks him one night.  

 

From that small window he sees the earth for how it really is, in all new shades and colours, vibrant to his eyes. He imagines explaining the colours to Dean, trying to say how they slither like tentacles between the stars.

 

“Do you remember how you made fun of Cosmos for the space and poetry thing?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“Imagine me, I don’t know, writing a sonnet right now about how the clouds blanket the earth.” 

 

“Can you see cool shapes? Like is there a bunny shaped cloud?” 

 

“This is the kind of science that NASA wants me to report on.” 

 

* * *

Aidan opens up his computer to check the playlist that Dean made.

 

_ Ground Control to Aidan. _

 

He laughs at the title as he clicks on the folder. He scrolls through the songs and sees that Dean made most of them about space. He plays the first song, David Bowie ‘Space Oddity’ his head nodding along to the beat. He skips through the tracks, rolling his eyes at his new space themed playlist. He pauses when he hears static, then the soft speaking voice of Dean breaking through. 

 

“ _ When I heard the learn’d astronomer, _

_ When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, _

_ When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, _

_ When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, _

_ How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, _

_ Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, _

_ In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, _

_ Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.”  _

 

There’s another pause before he speaks again, “you talk so much about space and how beautiful it is that I decided to find a poem that I like about it. This one reminded me of you.” 

 

Aidan rushes to the station computer, grabbing a headset and dialing in. 

 

“Do you have any concept of time?” Dean’s voice is tired on the line.

 

“Not really.” Aidan is smiling, Dean can hear it from the sound of his voice and it’s enough to wake him up. “Are you pulling a late shift?”

 

“Yeah, been here a while. Was hoping that you would check in.” Dean rubs his eyes and stifles a yawn.

 

“Sorry to keep you up. I listened to your playlist.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Thank you.” 

 

* * *

Every night before he sleeps he listens to the poem, listens to the cadence of Dean’s voice and imagines him looking up at the sky.

 

* * *

A message comes in one day on the station computer. 

 

_ Do you remember that saying? What is it, reach for the stars? I think that was made because of people like you. You're always looking up and trying to achieve more, gain more. You make me want more. There's so much that I didn't realize that I was missing before you. 01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101. _

 

Aidan translates the binary. He looks at the letters written out in his messy scrawl, smeared pencil graphite staring back at him.  _ I love you.  _

 

* * *

__

“What does the universe sound like?”

 

He worries his tongue, bites the inside of his cheek. It’s eerily quiet but he’s not always listening to the silence. “It sounds like you.” 

 

* * *

He’s spent his whole life imagining what it would be like to touch the stars, now all he can imagine is what it must be like to wake up late in the afternoon with his arms wrapped around Dean.

 

* * *

“Talk to me about theories, about multiverses, and know that in each one my choice is always you.”

 

* * *

“You’re coming back to earth soon.” Dean’s voice breaks over the frequency.

 

“Yeah, I’m coming home. 

 

* * *

“Do you think they’ve decoded all of our messages?” Aidan asks on his last day on the ISS.

 

“Oh yeah, there’s been a pool going around.” Dean leans back in his chair and puts his feet up on the desk. 

 

“For what?” Aidan laughs. 

 

“You’ll see.” 

 

Aidan’s stomach twists, he feels lighter even with the zero gravity. 

 

* * *

Coming back is surreal. His body feels heavy and his movements slow. He looks for Dean and when they finally see each other he wraps his arms around him the way he imagined the universe wrapping itself around them. He presses his nose into Dean’s hair and breathes him in, he smells like sea salt, like the sun on a long summer day. He smells like home.

 

* * *

He drops pens, drops mugs and cups. His mind is used to letting things float off into the station. Dean doesn’t mind, instead he buys a few plastic cups for him, with lids attached. Aidan tries to remember how he ended up living with him. He supposes that once he came back he just sort of never left Dean’s place.

 

* * *

 

 

He burns at the idea that he's never loved anything the way he loves Aidan. That he wants to be able to show him the bones and veins of his universe, to split himself open and ask him to discover.

 

* * *

 

Aidan was always born for flight, wings spread out and ready. With Dean at his side he's ready to swallow the universe whole. Eat the dawn, the morning sky, the horizon, and watch as it fades into black.

 

* * *

 

 

“So what was this bet that you were talking about?” Aidan asks as he walks with Dean in the MCC.

 

Dean nods his head towards a board on the wall written in blue white board marker. 

 

_ Who proposes first? _

 

O’Gorman       Turner

 

**卌** |||         **卌** ||

 

**Author's Note:**

> the poem is walt whitman.


End file.
